• On May 9th at the Casa de America, Moreira Salles will lead the master class on Eduardo Coutinho "How to make film with nearly nothing", which will be free of charge with advance registration only

• On April 25th at the French Institute, Agnès Varda will present her latest work Faces, Places as part of the activities leading up to DocumentaMadrid

DocumentaMadrid and the Casa de América will be hosting a special guest, the renowned Brazilian filmmaker João Moreira Salles, who will visit Madrid to meet the public at special screenings of major films from his filmography. Other additional activities on documentary film production in Latin America will also be offered. 

On Monday, May 7th at 7:30 pm at Casa de América, tribute will be made to the filmmaker and essayist, Fernando Birri, founder of the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños. On this occasion, there will be a screening of Carmen Guarini’s documentary Ata tu arado a una estrella (Argentina, 2017). 

On Tuesday, the 8th at 6:30 p.m., a screening will be held of No intenso agora (2017) by João Moreira Salles. After discovering amateur footage that the filmmaker's mother shot during the Cultural Revolution in China, the film tells the story and sensitively analyzes in detail the political events of May 68 using file footage taken in cities such as Paris, Prague and Rio de Janeiro. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director, to be moderated by the Brazilian filmmaker, playwright and journalist Carla Guimarães. On Thursday the 10th at 6:00 p.m., a second screening of the film will take place at the Cineteca to coincide with the 50th anniversary of these events, to be followed also by a discussion with Moreira Salles.

On Wednesday, the 9th at 7:30 p.m., the master class "How to make films on nearly nothing" will be led by João Moreira Salles about Eduardo Coutinho, a major figure in Brazilian and contemporary documentary film. For the Brazilian director, Coutinho's work is a key reference point and an ever-present source of inspiration. The two filmmakers worked together on numerous occasions and kept a close personal relationship, to the point of making Moreira Salles the co-head in a new stage of creation for Coutinho, during which he produced his last twelve feature films with the Videofilmes production company. Admission will be free, with advance registration on this link.

On Thursday, the 10th at 7:30 p.m., there will also be a screening of Últimas conversas (2015), the posthumous film begun by Eduardo Coutinho and completed by Moreira Salles. This film will also be included in DocumentaMadrid's section "From the classrooms to cinema", with which the festival brings documentary films to children and teenagers. Students at different educational centers in Madrid will attend this session, which will also be attended by Moreira Salles for discussion afterwards with the young people in attendance.

At 7:30 p.m. on Friday the 11th and on Saturday the 12th, there will be screenings of two films by Moreira Salles, respectively, Entreatos (2004) and Santiago (2007).

As part of the tribute to Fernando Birri and the Casa America's new section of programming "No por corto menos cine", on Friday the 11th at 5:30 p.m., a selection of recent works will be screened from students at the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV-Cuba), which Birri founded. The short films will be presented by screenwriter, producer, filmmaker and teacher Lola Mayo, Coordinator of the Documentary Department between 2014 and 2017 and co-creator of the Masters in Documentary Filmmaking at the EICTV. 

Admission to all screenings is free, until full capacity is reached. Tickets will be made available at the Casa América Information Point (Plaza de Cibeles s / n) starting one hour before each screening begins. Press accreditations to both the conference and the screenings can be requested at prensa@casamerica.es and prensa@documentamadrid.com

Agnès Varda, in the lead up to DocumentaMadrid

As a prelude to the kick off of DocumentaMadrid's official program, on April 25th the French Institute of Madrid will present Faces, Places (2017) the most recent film by acclaimed and multi-award winning French documentary filmmaker Agnès Varda. The filmmaker will visit Madrid as a special guest of the festival to take part in the presentation of her latest work. Tickets for this screening are already on sale on this website.

The Oscar nominated film Faces, Places is a road movie conceived of by Varda in creative negotiation with the artist JR. He is influenced by the faces and murals in Varda's films and, in turn, the director is a great admirer of JR's faces and murals in Cuba and the Pantheon in Paris. This point in common provides the setting for a lovely and exciting movie.

Get all festival materials here
See material about the films by Moreira Salles here
and the press kit here

To arrange reporting / interviews, please contact:

Beatriz Asín / Beatriz Cebas
Communication Team DocumentaMadrid
Las Espigadoras
prensa@documentamadrid.com / prensa2@documentamadrid.com

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